Shrinking territory of Isis forces its leaders into the open, and into the crosshairs

Increasing number of Isis leaders are being captured and killed as group runs out of hiding places

US-backed forces near the village of Susah in Deir Ez-Zor (AFP/Getty)

Isis leaders who for years have found sanctuary in the vast “caliphate” that once stretched across Iraq and Syria are being captured and killed in increasing numbers, as the impending loss of the last of the group’s territory has left them with nowhere to run.

At the height of its power Isis controlled an area roughly the same size as Britain and ruled over some 10 million people, but today it is cornered into a string of towns and villages in eastern Syria along the Euphrates River in Deir Ez-Zor.

The area around the town of Hajin, near the border with Iraq, has been a refuge for senior members who retreated from other battlefields to fight another day. Now, an offensive by US-backed fighters has forced many of them out of their safe havens and into the crosshairs.

The US-led coalition fighting Isis announced this week that it had killed a senior member of the group in the Badiyah Desert, near Hajin, adding to a string of high-level targets in recent months.

Abu al-Umarayn was killed in a targeted strike along with several other Isis members on 2 December, according to the coalition. He was thought to be involved in the 2014 murder of US citizen Peter Kassig, a 26-year-old aid worker who was executed by the group after being kidnapped while on a humanitarian mission in Syria.

Umarayn’s death, and other recent captures, have been attributed to the pressure on the group caused by the ongoing offensive against Hajin, which is the last populated area under Isis control.

“The intensity of the fight in the Euphrates Valley is drawing out some leaders as they are finding few places to hide as the battlefield shrinks,” Colonel Sean Ryan, a spokesman for the coalition, told The Independent.

He added that the airstrikes are part of a broader strategy in which Iraqi security forces are patrolling the nearby border with Iraq to ensure Isis members don’t escape. The coalition has assessed that many more Isis leaders may be hiding in Hajin, and so many more senior figures may soon follow.

Umarayn’s death followed the arrest of two other senior Isis figures announced last week, in Syria and Iraq. The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) captured Osama Oweid Saleh, who they described as “one of the most dangerous terrorists of the Daesh (IS) group” in the Deir Ez-Zor countryside. At the same time, Iraqi authorities aired a taped confession from a captured Isis leader named Jamal al-Mashadani, who they said was behind the parading of captured Kurdish peshmerga soldiers in cages through the town of Hawija. He was arrested at his son’s home in Baghdad.

In May, when Hajin was surrounded but the operation to recapture it had not yet begun, a joint Iraqi-US intelligence operation led to the capture of five top Isis officials, including a top aide to Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, the group’s leader. The four Iraqis and one Syrian were said to be in charge of governing Isis territory in Deir Ez-Zor.

“Many of these members survived from previous battles but they have nowhere to go now, their ability to move around is significantly diminished,” said Hassan Hassan, author of ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror and fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy.

He added that many of the arrests appear to have been facilitated by increased cooperation between Iraq, Turkey and Syria. But he also said that many of the group’s top leaders still remained elusive.

“We haven’t seen many leaders from core Isis, despite their importance. None of them, for example, knows where Baghdadi is. So in that sense these captures won’t be fatal for the organisation, but they are too disruptive at a time when Isis needs every and each person and resource to sustain an insurgency against the Iraqis and Syrians,” he told The Independent.

Many of these members survived from previous battles but they have nowhere to go now, their ability to move around is significantly diminished 

Hassan Hassan, author of ‘ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror’ 

Taken collectively, the arrests and assassinations appear to be part of a shift by the US-led coalition and its allies towards anti-insurgency operations that mirror the changing nature of Isis.

In August this year, a report by United Nations sanctions monitors said Isis still had between 20,000 and 30,000 members spread across Iraq and Syria, most of whom are not currently engaged in fighting but could be called upon at a later date. The report warned that the group is in the process of “reverting from a proto-state structure to a covert network”.

The operation to capture Hajin has been one of the toughest battles faced by the Syrian Democratic Forces, a mostly Kurdish militia backed by the US in the fight against Isis. Whereas in previous battles the extremist group has made deals to move to other areas, there is nowhere else to escape to from Hajin. And because it is the last holdout for Isis, the battle is being led by the group’s most experienced fighters. Isis has also taken advantage of bad weather to push back the SDF and recapture territory it lost.

As a result, there have been significant casualties on both sides. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that some 793 Isis fighters have been killed since the beginning of the operation to take Hajin in mid-September, while 464 SDF fighters have died.

There have been significant civilian casualties, too. Much like in previous battles to recapture towns in which Isis is entrenched, the coalition has relied heavily on its superior air power.

Around 10,000 civilians remain trapped in the Hajin pocket, along with some 5,000 Isis fighters and their families, according to the UN office for humanitarian affairs. In October, the UN said that “scores of civilians have reportedly been killed and injured due to airstrikes or having been caught in the crossfire” around Hajin.

“The ability of civilians to move freely remains unclear given ongoing high-intensity hostilities as well as persistent reports of restrictions imposed by parties to the conflict that prevent civilians from reaching safety,” it added.